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Wednesday, 25 April 2007

Napoleon

It's taken me a couple of days to upload all the photos I have taken of the Napoleon diorama, but here they are. Above are two general shots of the whole stand and various close-ups are below. The base size is 250mm x 200mm (made to order by East Riding Miniatures - thanks Tony!). Originally I was going to have a series of smaller stands but decided to consolidate all the figures that were specifically attached to Napoleon into one vignette - the logic was that I'm never going to have the Imperial Household and Chasseur escort on the table without Napoleon (and vice versa), so it made sense to have them all in one place. It also made it easier to build some symmetry into the layout. The aides, staff and general officers I did put on two smaller stands and I will put photos of those up shortly.

The "story" behind the way I position the figures is that things are not going according to plan; Napoleon is having a go at Soult, Ney is watching Soult to see his reaction, Drouot is trying to keep out of trouble and Valet Marchand is bringing them all a tot of gin to calm their nerves (dispensed by Mameluke Ali from his flask). Napoleon's aide-de-camp, General Gourgaud, is receiving a report from a divisional ADC. Napoleon and his "core team" are encased within the Guard Chasseur escort, the commander of which is hovering close to his emperor (apparently only the army chief-of-staff was ever allowed between Napoleon and his escort commander). At the back of the stand are members of the Imperial Household - a piqueur holding Napoleon's horse "Marengo", another valet, a page with Napoleon's telescope case and another Chasseur holding Napoleon's map case.

I think this turned out ok in the end, although it is a large set and I imagine won't see the tabletop all that often, which will be a shame because a lot of work went into it. That said, it was great fun to work on and for an AWI gamer it's something different to have in one's collection! The figures are of course all from the Perry 1815 French range.

I saw the game at Salute and was very impressed with the vignette and your DB lt cavalry bde. I saw the Foundry 18th century civvies and was tempted as well. When will anyone do some more like that for the Napoleonic period? I liked the duelling figures, and with a little work they will become the protagonist's from Ridley Scot's 'The Duellists'

As matter of interest, what do you use to base your units and vignettes. I use thin metal sheets. What's your preference?

Artilleryman, I use mdf bases from East Riding Miniatures. In fact, I should have given a credit in the post to Tony Barr of ERM for cutting the Napoleon base to order and getting it to me in a matter of hours so I could get the display finished in time. ERM's bases are cheap and easy to use. I've heard good things about steel bases too.

I'm painting the duellists set at the moment. The sculpts are a bit of a shock after Perry figures - they are certainly very well fed civilians! Great fun though, and you're right in that the seconds etc could easily be converted into army types. The guys on the Foundry stand said that more civilians packs were on their way.